I wrote before about using a secure connection to retrieve your email, using OS X’s Mail.app. The biggest problem was properly importing the secure certificate.
Well, it worked faithfully for me, right up until this evening. The certificate expired today, and a new one was issued. You cannot, however, import the new certificate without removing the old one. The existing certificate does not reside in any of the keychains that show up by default when you open Keychain Access.
After a bit of searching and misinformation, here was the solution:
Open “Keychain Access”.
Under the ‘File’ menu, select ‘Add keychain…’
Navigate your way to the ‘System’ folder at the top level of your hard drive. Inside there, go to ‘Library’, and then go to ‘Keychains’.
In that folder, open the ‘X509 Anchors’ file.
When this keychain loads in ‘Keychain Access’, look through the list and delete the existing certificate.
From this point on, follow the steps in my original post to import the new keychain.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I miss winter. Winter in places where it’s really winter, anyway. Winter should be snow in drifts you could lose small people in. Winter should be bone-chilling winds that the best coats and hats can’t keep out. Winter should mean every body of water being hidden beneath an icy blanket for 4 months. Winter’s should mean storms where you could lose an elephant if it strayed more than 6 inches away from you. Winter should mean something.
Here winter tends to mean being careful not to slip in the slush.
I love this above picture, (taken by Michael Tinkler). A boathouse on the campus in my hometown. It’s frozen in, with ice extending probably 40 or 50 feet out from the shore, on this massive 42 mile long lake. The water is choppy and steaming, although it’s hard not to think of it as some dry ice or liquid nitrogen gas release. And of course, the sun beats down perfectly clearly, not making the least noticeable difference in the temperature.
Nature will have its way whenever it feels like it.
Hard to believe I used to sit on a bench in that exact spot, during the summer, reading. (Or, when I was even younger, watching with my friend, as college co-eds made out on the dock).
It’s really not the same, but a recent cold snap here in DC froze over much of the Potomac. You can see the unending field of snow in the picture below, leading to the foot of the Jefferson Memorial. The snow of course is just dusting the sheet of ice that buried the Tidal Basin.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Yeah, I know. It’s a pretty cheesy mirror shot. But it felt right. Five months ago, I tried pretty much the same thing. But I couldn’t lift one arm, and the other was shaking. And within a couple day’s I couldn’t even walk.
Time passes, and I feel fine.
But why does my hair look better before I’ve even combed it?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I read a definition of success recently that I really like:
Success is when opportunity meets readiness
I think the original quote is about Hollywood, but it’s pretty universal, in my opinion. And it’s been very true about my own life. Every major thing that’s happened to me involved a specific event that occurred unexpectedly, but while I was fortunately ready to exploit it. It could also be considered a practical definition of fate: when the right moment comes along, you’re ready to seize it.
I think where it falls apart for some people is the last bit. They know that finding the right moment is vital, but they seem to expect it to carry them off like a wave, when it happens. But the reality is you have to be able to recognize the moment, react in time, and run with it.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
There are a few tricks to getting a good logo. In this case, when I say “good”, I am strictly referring to the technical nature of the digital artwork, and not the artistic merit nor communication capabilities of it. The basic traits of a good logo file are:
vector format
spot colored
all type converted to outlines
Ask for it
First, tell your client you need the logo. Yes, they probably sent you a GIF off their website that wouldn’t even look good to Helen Keller. But often they just send you the first thing they can find, because they don’t know any better. So the first option should always be to simply tell them the specifications of good art, and ask them if they can find it in their own company or files.
And occasionally when the logo is from someone other than your direct client, (a sponsor, for example), you can always find their communications department and call them. Explain to them about your project, and ask if they can provide the artwork you need.
Download it
Unfortunately, fewer and fewer companies even keep good copies of their identity package around. But if you’re lucky, and the client is fairly well known or large, you can download their logo. First, check the “About Us” section of their website for a page made just for this purpose. Bigger companies and organizations often have their whole identity standards manual online.
If that doesn’t work, check out Brands of the World, (formerly logos.nina.ru). It is a unaffiliated archive online for vector-format logos from anywhere. Their searching and browsing interface is pretty weak, but their archive is very extensive. Even when you can’t find the exact logo you’re looking for, you can often find a variation on it.
Cheat
Many companies are ignorant of what they actually have in the way of artwork. Or their “regular designers” simply don’t share their files with the client. So a good copy exists, of course, and is being used. They just don’t know it. But thankfully, everyone is obsessed with the internet, now, without really knowing why. So every major document and announcement is posted to a company’s website, and most often in PDF format. Download a PDF of their annual report or similar document, and you can often open the file in Illustrator and grab a perfect copy of their logo.
Don’t know where to find the PDF on their huge corporate website? The easiest solution is to use Google. You go to the “advanced search” section of google, and you can tell it to show you all the PDF files available under any given domain name. It’s amazing what will turn up.
Suck it up
If their logo is bad enough that you really don’t think it should be printed, tell them. Tell them if it can’t be found, it needs to be recreated. And if you really don’t feel up to it, hire me. 🙂 And once you do have a good copy of the logo, do yourself a favor, and as I suggested in my last post, start a logo archive of your own.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
As a designer, you tend to be involved with many logos over time, both your own and others. Everyone and their sister’s lesbian roommate’s cousin has a logo, and you will eventually probably use them in some project. And if you have any sense at all, you back up all the art from your projects anyway. But I recommend keeping a logo archive, preferably in a convenient location for immediate use. Logos, when done right, are very small files, so they won’t take up much space. Not a week goes by that I don’t go back to my archive to pull up a logo. If it would otherwise take 5 minutes to dig up the right file, that’s a savings of over 4 hours, over the course of a year. But most importantly, it will inevitably improve the quality of your work. It never ceases to amaze me how many companies — large or small — can’t provide you good copies of their logos. By saving the best copy you can find of everyone’s logo, your work improves and you exceed your client’s expectations.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
As I’m sitting here, I found a scar that I’d forgotten I had. It took me a while to even remember where it came from. It’s right at the joint, so I don’t normally even notice it among the normal creases. It just reminds me of the various other scars, none of which I’ve looked at either, lately. And you know… every single one of them came from me doing something stupid.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
